The metaphysics of the gaze: short dialogue with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Lacan. Taking as a starting point the important role played by the gaze of the other in early psychic development, this article presents a hypothesis about the imitation of the gaze as a key element in the constitution of the ego. The grounds for this hypothesis are searched for in some aspects of three different theories of the gaze: those of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Lacan. The article explores the convergences and disagreements among these authors and proposes, as a form of dialogue with them, an original understanding of Lacan's concept of the gaze as object a.
The gaze; ego constitution; imitation